


Sunrise in a Water Willow and Other Stories

by gialaxy



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, These are just oneshots i wrote for zutara week 2016, Toph/Aang (mentioned), Zutara Week 2016, also sad, just a little though, lots of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-14 02:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9155704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gialaxy/pseuds/gialaxy
Summary: “Theirs is an eternal dance, of distance and closeness, but always winding their way back to the other, whether it be by battle or peace, violence or love.”A collection of Zutara oneshots for Zutara Week 2016. These aren't in chronological order at all but there's lots of fluff and stuff :')





	1. Dragons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Words:** ~700 (not too long).  
>  **Prompt:** Dragons.  
>  Imagine this happened sometime during Book 3 when Katara was friends with Zuko and everything was Good™. I wrote minimal backstorying for this moment but I cried while writing this so enjoy the content a Trash Can™ wrote :')

The moon seems oblivious to the sudden spread of light across the opposite horizon, tendrils of pink and orange, reaching as though toward the moon herself. The sunrise is being observed by two beings, two that could either negate or balance each other. 

Katara is perched high in the frail branches of a water willow, whose roots are firm in the stream below. At the moment, she has a predicament.

This particular predicament has amber eyes and dark hair and a scarred but beautiful face. This predicament has a name, and he is perched beside her. He is a predicament or a dilemma, because she is unsure if friendship is a good enough name for what she feels for him, or whether the line has been blurred farther and farther into love. At least on her side of the balance.

“Remind me,” the predicament says, in his low voice, tinged with grogginess, glancing over at her, “why are we at the top of a water willow, before anyone's supposed to be awake?”

“We have the best view of the dragons from here,” Katara replies solemnly. 

“Since when are there dragons involved in your plan to make me suffer by waking me up too early?” Zuko grumbles, rubbing his scarred face with his hand, and then running it through his ruffled hair.

“Since I thought it up in my evil, evil head.” She grins at him, memorizing every ridge of his face, the way the light plays on his cheekbones and dances in his golden eyes. Tearing her gaze away, she fixes it on a spot in the horizon.

Then, two shadows interrupt the orange and pink gradient forming on the edge of the sky. 

Two dragons’ silhouettes, long and slender forms, spiked tails, are now visible in stunning clarity and contrast. The dragons spin, swirling themselves around each other, forming two semicircles linked at the base. A dance. The dragons never stop moving.

She hears the breath go out of his lungs in a single, efficient whoosh.

“It's..." he starts to say. "It's-they're beautiful.” He breathes.

“I told you the water willow was the best place to see them.” She says lightly. After all, she's just glad he likes it.

“This happens every sunrise?” He asks incredulously. 

“Mostly during the summer. Maybe once a week?” She shrugs. “I'm up here every morning.”

“How did you know ... it would be today?” Zuko feels like all he's doing is asking, but he's content this way.

“I had a hunch,” she says with a wry grin.

“I should start waking up earlier,” he murmurs, mostly to himself, eyes fixed on the figures above the horizon.

She doesn't reply, but instead gazes at the dragons, twisting themselves around each other. 

He turns his head, suddenly so close, so _right there_ , and she wants to act like she wasn’t staring at him stare at the sunrise, but she was. 

“Thank you,” he breathes softly, “thank you for this.”

“It's nothing,” she says.

Something like anxiety -or worry- passes through his eyes but as soon as it's gone, he leans forward and then there- there, that millisecond moment where their lips barely brush, a thousand fireworks go off in her chest. He pulls back gently, to look into her eyes, and she nods the subtlest nods. 

And then he’s kissing her. He pulls away hesitantly, but she leans forward, into his lips and every atom in her body collides. 

He places his hand softly on her cheek after hovering around it for a moment, and her hands are placed at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer. Softly, kindly, he’s always so gentle with her, the way his hands reach into her loose hair, tilting her head up slightly, the way his thumb strokes her cheekbone, as though she’s something to treasure. To him, she is. She feels like she's drowning in him, in the kiss, but she's never been scared of drowning before. She is ignited by passion, by love, her eyes closed.

And just out of their gaze, as the sun rose higher into the sky, one could faintly make out that one dragon was blue, the other red. For water and fire. To balance each other. Or to cancel each other out. The dragons’ is an eternal dance, of distance and closeness, but always winding their way back to the other, whether it be by battle or peace, violence or love. 

But for now, they have each other, in the scenario of love, locked in their embrace on a willow branch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked this, but you probably didn't because I'm trash and my trashness is visible (readable??) in my writing and this was pretty bad. But if you did like this, please give me some feedback!! If you didn't like it, tell me why!! Thanks!!
> 
> Andrea xx


	2. Reincarnation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Words:** ~350 (short)  
>  **Prompt:** Reincarnation.  
>  This is more of Katara reminiscing about their love and I sort of poured my inner poet into this, and it's really short but I kind of like it.

When Katara was young, she hoped her next life would be as a polar bear dog, if not an earthbender. She liked how the polar bear dog was grounded and down to earth, strong and powerful, similar to an earthbender. She thought that the dog was better than the earthbender, because then human connection would be reduced to a minimum, and she’d be able to immerse herself in the element.

But when she had fallen in love with Zuko, she only hoped her next life would be next to his, whether as a polar bear dog or an earthbender or a butterfly bee.

In the stolen moments they spent together, she became endless in the way his lips brushed hers, the softness of his fingers in her hair, and the warmth in his touch. In those moments, next lives didn’t exist. In those moments, they were eternal, reincarnations of everything they were, being remade again and again. Others would frown at their public displays of affection: Sokka grumbling something mildly threatening to Zuko, Aang making disgusted sounds and keeling over as if to throw up. Toph didn’t mind, as long as it didn’t become overly verbal.

So she spent long hours tangled up with a sleeping Zuko, her firebender, her Fire Lord, her love, hers, doing nothing but hoping and praying to any spirit that wanted to listen to let them be together in their next life. Soul drawn to soul, through every life and life after. Once she realized the endlessness of them, their love, those infinite moments changed.

She reincarnated when they kissed, and again through every slight brush of contact. Through each whispered “I love you”, repeated like a mantra, she grew into a new skin, a new life. He was her life, she gave him all she had to give and more. He swore to never leave her, his hand fitted perfectly to hers, and more intimately, to the nape of her neck. Sometimes, she felt that all this reincarnation was tiring, but then he’d kiss her and all doubts were obliterated.

Through him, she lived and died and reincarnated. Through him, because of him, she loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was interesting to write, and I'm sorry it's so short. 
> 
> Andrea xx


	3. Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Words:** ~1100 (long-ish).  
>  **Prompt:** Memories.  
>  Zuko and Katara talking late at night about their past and lots of fluff. Enjoy,

“Brazen thief!” Katara screamed to Zuko, breaking the sleepy silence that had fallen over the room. The firebender had been sleeping since they’d climbed into the bed, whereas Katara had been trying to obtain such slumber for what felt like hours. Unknowingly, Zuko had shifted and dragged the blanket along with him, exposing Katara to the cold room. 

He blinked blearily, woken by her shrill scream, before closing his eyes again. “What…?” He managed to mumble, holding the blanket tightly. He’d been curled around Katara’s body, arm laid lazily over her waist, head buried in her hair, and then he’d decided, in his sleep, to flip over -subconsciously, he knew Katara would adjust her body to fit his without hesitation- and dragged the blanket from where the edge was hardly covering her properly. He hadn’t been able to make it all the way through the turn before she screamed, so he laid on his back.

“You took the blanket from my side, dammit!” She exclaimed, her voice louder than it should be for the ungodly hour that it was.

“Too loud…” he groaned, rubbing his head that had begun to ache, and she lowered her voice appropriately.

“Sorry,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to his temple. He smiled sleepily, leaning in to her touch. “Can I have some blanket, too?” 

“Hmm… yeah, sure…” he tossed a corner of the blanket that had been bunched under him blindly over to her side, and she pulled it close, snuggling under. He was still half asleep, and longed for her to stop talking so they could go back to the comfortable position they’d been in earlier and back to sleep.

“For the Fire Nation, it’s shockingly cold in here.” She said, shifting her position so that her head rested in the space between his neck and shoulders, arm laid across his torso.

Zuko only shrugged sleepily, and mumbled something that sounded like ‘cold winter, go to sleeep' and cracked his eyes open to slits for the first time during the whole ordeal. Katara’s heart nearly jumped. She was used to his amber eyes gazing at her, but they never failed to take her breath away. He tucked his head under her neck.

“Can’t,” she said simply. “Wanna stay up with me and talk?” 

“Firebender… rise… sun… tired…” Zuko said blearily. 

“C’mon, we haven’t actually sat down and talked for a long time,” Katara said, poking him in the side. He jolted under her cold finger.

“’Cause each time we ‘sit down to talk’, we usually end up kissing,” He gained some consciousness, enough to move his head forward enough to kiss her lips softly.

“True,” she giggled into his lips. “But no kissing. I mean it.”

“Unfair,” he mumbled, kissing her again. “But alright.”

Her grin was devilish. She sat up against the headboard, and he did the same. Tucking her legs beneath her, she grabbed the blanket and threw it over their backs, and since she’d turned it lengthwise, it was wide enough to accommodate both their backs and wrap around their front, too. Zuko pulled his knees up to his chest.

“What do you want to talk about?” He asked, and yawned tiredly.

“Remember that time at the Air Temple we slummed in with the rest of the people before the comet shindig-” she mentioned the comet lightly, because if she went into greater detail she’d end up a sobbing mess, and the no-kissing rule ( _Why did I even say that?_ ) would be broken entirely, “-when you got up late at night, and I was near the fountain, bending the water, because I couldn’t sleep, and we actually talked?”

“Probably the only human conversation we’d ever had that didn’t end in making out,” he smiled, glancing over at her to find she was staring at his lips. “Can I kiss you? Please?” he asked, like a child begging for sweets.

“Not after we have this talk. My rule is dumb, but I make a habit of not breaking my own rules.”

Zuko groaned, before telling a story of his own. “And that time, when I was still with Mai, I found you perched in a mango tree outside my balcony at _three in the morning_. I walked out onto the balcony, saw you there, asked what you were doing and you nearly fell off the branch, then mumbled something about mangoes.” He chuckled softly, smirking in a lopsided way that she loved, and saw Katara flush furiously.

“Hey, that tree had some good mangoes-” She began in frustration, before giving out a loud and emphatic _ugh_.

“Fine, if that’s how you’re going to be. Remember that time, we'd been together for a month or so, where I was changing after training in my room and you _accidentally_ walked into my room because you thought it was yours?” Katara shot back with a smirk of her own. “And then you sort of... stood there for a moment, when I was reduced to nothing but my bindings, yelling at you to leave?”

“Could have been worse. Might have been Aang. He would've enjoyed the sight,” Zuko said with a grin, unfazed, wrapping an arm around her shoulders under the blanket. 

“Aang wasn’t in love with me back then,” her face was completely red by then.

“I think he was,” Zuko replied with a smile, nudging her nose with his. “Always has been.” 

“Let’s not involve my past… lovers in this nice talk,” Katara said sharply.

“Oh, so Aang was a lover?” Zuko asked, amused. Any other consort she’d have chosen would be defensive, jealous. But since this one in particular was so in love with her, and he knew it was mutual, he didn’t mind.

Katara let out a sharp groan of frustration, her face going fully red. 

“Okay, okay,” Zuko relented. “I’m dropping it.”

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“Remember that time, at sunset, out in the courtyard during the summer, you were wearing your Fire Nation clothes, your hair was in a pretty knot and everything, and you came out of the palace because you saw light through your window. It was just me firebending, but then we sat by the stream and then you kissed me? It was the first time we’d kissed, and it was really nice.” He said softly, brushing his lips against her neck. “Speaking of us kissing, that’s something I’d like to do right now.” He rested his forehead against hers, his words nothing more than a whisper.

So she tilted her head upwards, and he bent down a little to compensate for the height difference, and so his lips were on hers, at last. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he tangled his hands in her hair. Pulling away a fraction of an inch, enough to speak, he said what he’d been needing to say since that day in the courtyard. She put one hand on his cheek.

“I love you, Katara,” he breathed, “I love you so much.”

Without hesitating, she replied “I love you too. You’re horrible and embarrassing sometimes, but I love you, so much, Zuko.” 

Sighing contently, she scooted forward down the bed, and leaned her head on his shoulder, and he fell asleep before she did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked this sickeningly fluffy fic. I'm mad at myself at how much fluff there is here.
> 
> Andrea xx


	4. Lilac

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Words:** ~550  
>  **Prompt:** Lilac  
>  **Warning:** Major Character Death  
>  Okay so this one is really sad, I'm sorry, and it's probably the worst one up here so far ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> Enjoy and don't kill me if you cry.

“No, Zuko, you are _not_ leaving me today…” Her voice cracked. She leaned over him, and pressed her hands to his wound. They were already covered in blood, his blood. She choked on a sob. She tried bending the water out of a container at her side, but her hands trembled too much, and she dropped it. So much blood coated his torso, so much blood. _Why was there so much blood_?

“Katara…” he breathed, painfully. “I can’t… not much longer.”

“Hold on… just a few more minutes. Sokka’s gone to get Iroh and some healers, it’ll just be a few moments- please- Zuko, please be okay.” 

“I love you,” he wheezed, “I’ll never get to say it again but I do, I love you.” 

Katara relented at the words, pulling back. She and Zuko had never… well. She hadn’t really been with anyone since she’d kissed Aang and subsequently broken up with him, but that was several years ago. 

“You will,” she said, ignoring what the words meant in that moment. “You will, just hold on. Please. Hold on, for me.” Two painful sobs erupted from somewhere deep in her chest. 

“Come on, Zuko, hang in there. Stay with me. Zuko…?” He’d closed his eyes. His breathing was shallower.

“Zuko, open your eyes. Zuko!” She called, placing her hand on his cheek. His eyes fluttered open.

“I…” he breathed. “Not much time. Hurts.”

“I know,” she whispered. “Okay,” she whispered in an attempt at gathering herself. Raising her hands, she drew the water up and out of the dirt with subtle twitches of her fingers. It was a small amount of water, not enough to heal the wound fully, but it could dull the pain and stop the bleeding until help came. The water glowed from between her fingers, and she pressed it to his side. The cloth of his shirt was already torn around the wound, but she pushed it aside farther. The water touched his side, and he exhaled sharply at the contact. But once he got used to it, the ripples of the water were actually soothing, the cool of it against his burning side. He closed his eyes again.

“Zuko, open your eyes. Please. You _will not_ die on me today. Maybe in twenty years, once I kill you for being a jerk, but not now.” She laughed through her sobs, and he smiled a little, and she accidently dropped the water straight onto the wound. She swore violently.

He twitched, and moaned in pain, squeezing his eyes shut. 

“Sorry-I love you, too,” she whispered, clutching his hand instead. She hadn’t realized it before… but now it seemed so obvious. The butterfly-bees in her stomach each time they touched, the way her world tilted when he smiled. That’s what it was. Love. “Just- please, hold on a little longer.” She sobbed again. 

His fingers twitched, and his other arm moved. In a shaking hand, he held a lilac flower out toward her.

“Remember me,” he whispered, and closed his eyes. His breathing stopped. 

Now, she cried in earnest.

“ _Zuko_!”  
She picked the flower from his lifeless fingers, and curled her hand over it, bending over. Several minutes later, _several minutes too late,_ Sokka and Iroh arrived to find Katara with tears pooling by her knees and a flower in her hand. She subtly shook her head. They understood.

She kept the flower, pressed in a book, for over fifty years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked this, please leave kudos and if you didn't like this, please tell me why!!
> 
> Andrea xx


	5. Fever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Words:** ~1200 (long-ish)  
>  **Prompt:** Fever  
>  I would tag this hurt/comfort but honestly, there is like no hurt at all and it's 90% Katara being Confused and Bitter™ and then Zuko trying not to stab her and then they kiss. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

“Zuko, are you okay? You’ve been burning up for two days.” Katara said worriedly from across the tent.

They’d traveled to the South Pole during summer, and the sun was present for twenty-four hours a day. It was common for newcomers to feel sick, or come down with fevers that seemed real, but was just a trick of the light. There was folklore surrounding this mysterious Light Plague, mainly myths that the spirits were punishing the newcomers who weren’t accustomed to the full presence of the sun for stepping in sacred land. The people who came down with the sickness were not truly sick, but merely at a mental unrest and incessant exhaustion. 

“I’m fine,” Zuko grumbled. It had been five years since the war, but the people of the Water Tribe still didn’t like his presence in their home. The fact that he’d been accompanied by Sokka and Katara upon their arrival three days ago eased the bitterness a bit, but the former of the siblings was in a tent across camp.

“No, you aren’t,” she hoped she could get him to admit he was sick, or else she’d have to come up with an excuse for why she’d spontaneously decided to touch his forehead. She wasn’t about to tell her _grandmother_ she’d been kissing the Fire Lord, among other things. Although, knowing Kanna, she likely suspected it already.

“Calm down, Katara, I just need some rest,” the firebender mumbled dismissively. 

“You’ve been resting for two days!” Katara exclaimed, throwing a deep blue coat over her shoulders. “It’s normal for you to be sick. We call it the Light Plague. Just- admit that you’re unwell, and I’ll get Gran-Gran to make you some medicine.”

“Can’t you get me medicine _without_ me having to admit it?” Zuko smirked from his spot, bundled under pelts of all different colors. He was catching onto her plan.

Katara frowned, then stopped frowning, then frowned again. Her cheeks flushed. “What?” she exclaimed.

“I didn’t say anything,” Zuko said thinly, his eyes wary. 

Katara’s face flashed through a glare, and then, settling back down, she sighed, and marched out of the tent.

Zuko shrugged, and drifted back into a restless sleep.

 

“Here you go,” a sharp voice jarred him awake. The sickness was making him sensible, in all his senses. Every sound was always too many decibels too loud, each brush of the coarse blankets on his bare skin made him want to scream. The soft scent of fallen snow and sea salt overflowed his nostrils. Katara’s face loomed over him, holding a jar with a suspicious substance in it.

“Good morning to you too,” he mumbled, closing his eyes again. Speaking was a mistake, he soon realized, as his head began pounding. 

“It’s almost midnight.” She replied matter-of-factly.

“So…?” 

“ _So_ , I’m not required to say good morning to you.” She replied, tossing her free hand in the air in exasperation.

“A simple ‘wake up, Zuko, I have some medicine’ will suffice,” he groaned.

Katara rolled her eyes, inclining the jar of murky green jelly towards his face. He grimaced and she widened her eyes in annoyance, pushing it closer. Her hair was down, he noticed, and not in the traditional Southern Water Tribe style. 

Zuko withdrew an arm from beneath the blankets and gripped the jar, tipping its contents into his mouth. He nearly spat it back out -it tasted like paper and celery of some kind and a very bland, muddy taste he couldn’t quite place- but, holding his breath, swallowed the rest.

"Thanks," he wheezed.

“You’ll feel better once you’ve digested that. I don't know why I decided to go make it for you. You should have gone yourself.” Katara replied sharply. “Good night, Zuko.” She said and quickly shut the blackout curtain, and the room was dark. He noticed she didn’t take her usual place beside him, but instead chose a sleeping bag across the tent.

“Katara…” he said slowly. “Did I do something stupid?”

He received no reply, and for a moment he thought she’d fallen asleep. 

“No,” she sighed. Katara never admitted defeat. Never. “I did.”

Zuko hesitated. This was even more rare. “What happened?”

“I snapped at you. I wasn’t even mad. I was just bitter and tired. You know why the medicine took so long? Gran-Gran made me make it myself once she figured out it was for you. She realized very quickly we were more than just friends.” She sighed. “I’m just scared what kind of image people get when we’re together. Me, a water tribe girl, I can’t possibly be with you with so many people doubting me, so many people turning their backs on me, much less a Fire Lady.”

She drew in a sharp breath and he could practically see her eyes widen at the implication. Zuko himself froze. Marriage? He hadn’t even _considered_ it since they’d started being together two years ago. “Wait- you- wait.” He tried forming words, but his tongue seemed to have swelled and the fever was not helping. He breathed deeply. “Okay. You… you want to get married to me?”

He knew her cheeks were flushing uncontrollably and she was probably cringing.

“I mean,” she exhaled, “well, yes- but no- but- no offense- well- and-” she gave up and groaned into her hands.

Zuko stepped out of the blankets, shivering as his bare torso came into contact with the cold, cold air. He toed his way to her side of the tent, and, feeling a warm body beneath many blankets, sunk to the ground and curled under the blankets. 

There was very little light, but enough to just barely see her face. He pulled her body close to his, and his hand on her neck. His thumb gently stroked her jawline.

“I don’t want to lose you,” she whispered.

“You won’t,” he promised. “I… I really like you. I don’t want to lose this. But… marriage? Eventually, hopefully. But… not now. I mean, if you really want, we can do a promise ritual… but I don’t think I’m ready.”

“I would like to marry you. Some day. But not this soon. I’m sorry I snapped. I didn’t mean it if I… hurt you.” She closed her eyes. “If you’re not ready, I can respect that. Honestly, I don’t think I am, either. I just… I let my mouth do the work. My mouth said Fire Lady, I didn’t want that and well…” she babbled.

“So your mouth wants to marry me?” He replied with a smirk. 

She flushed furiously. “I think my mouth wouldn’t mind being very near yours.”

And with that, he bent his neck and brushed his lips softly against the corner of her mouth, before she trapped them lightly with her own. After they broke away, Katara sighed, and leaned her head on his bare chest, and his hand trailed around her back in idle patterns.

“I love you, you know.” She said, mostly into his muscled chest. His heart stopped- started again- then stopped as the reality of the words hit him, and he swore she felt it against her cheek.

“I love you too, Katara. But right now, I can’t decide if I’d rather marry sleep or you.” He smirked and her cheek heated considerably. The marriage jokes would be coming for a long, long time.

He fell asleep soon after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked this... I still have two more prompts to post so enjoy I guess??? 
> 
> Andrea xx


	6. Coffee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Words:** ~1300 (kinda long)  
>  **Prompt:** Coffee  
>  **AU:** Modern/University  
>  I was high on caffeine + not entirely awake while writing this so there's a high possibility this resembles another work (my subconscious is a weird place, man). If you notice this, and know what work this is similar to, please let me know and I'll credit it here.  
> Enjoy.

The room was cold, she was tired, and it was quarter past two, but exams wouldn't wait for her to memorize everything and be entirely awake and healthy to take them.

Presently, Katara was trying to read chapters twenty-four through thirty-two (the material needed for her anatomy class final) for the fifth time that night, but the figure next to her on the couch was not letting her. Luckily, the couch was wide enough for one and a half people, the extra half was hers, and was stacked on top of Zuko's body. Her head was somewhere around his chest and shoulders, his chin rested by her ear. He had switched off the lamp.

“Zuko. Turn the light back on.” She clipped at him. 

“Mm, why don't you just fall asleep?” He mumbled into her hair. 

“I have to study! There's no universe where I graduate medicine with all my honours _and_ fail Anatomy!” She huffed.

“Honours...” he sighed. “I remember when it was me still chasing those classes. Good thing I got into all the ones I needed.” 

She snarled at him.

“I'm sure you're ready, Katara,” he said, kissing her temple. “You're just working yourself over nothing.” 

“It's not nothing!” She exclaimed, slamming her textbook closed. “It's my _anatomy final_!” 

“That's the spirit,” he said, withdrawing his arm from somewhere and shoving the textbook out of her hand. “Just, relax. I'll wake you in the morning and give you trivia or whatever.” He groaned, waving his hand against the book until it caved and tumbled out of her grasp and onto the floor with a flat _clack_. 

She groaned and moved to pick it up, but his arms were around her, pulling her down, pressing kisses down her neck. 

Giggling, she tried worming away. 

“We're on the couch,” she whispered harshly to him, trying not to show him how much she enjoyed this kind of treatment, as he trailed his lips down her neck and near her collarbone.

“So?” He said into her bare shoulder. 

“ _Aang_ could walk in on us!” She hissed. It was the common room, the union of two dorms. The aforementioned gray-eyed boy was sharing the adjoining dormitory with his girlfriend, Toph. Funnily enough, Toph and Katara had been roommates, and so had Zuko and Aang. At first, Aang had had a crush on Katara, but he'd gotten over it once she'd started dating Zuko. Toph hated the idea of sleeping in the same room as Katara and her boyfriend, and had begun hunting for a new dorm. Soon after, Toph and Aang had begun dating, resolving the dorm problem, so Zuko moved into Katara's room, and Toph into Aang's. 

Zuko's body shifted, and she assumed he was shrugging to her previous statement, and raised his lips to her jawbone. She shivered.

“I'm not sleeping now, not actual-sleeping or _that_ kind of sleeping,” she said adamantly, while he trailed his lips by her ear. “I'm going to study.”

“Study something else,” He mumbled into her neck, pressing another kiss there.

“Like what?” She retorted, trying not to show him how much she was really enjoying this.

“Me,” he said, and she could feel his smirk on her skin. She knew the night would not continue as planned.

 

A vile word was the one that woke her up. Zuko was in the common room kitchen, fumbling with the coffeemaker, and it rested precariously on the counter, and had apprently slipped off when he swore loudly.

_Clothing_ , Katara though dully, glancing over the pile of blue silk on the ground by the couch, before realizing she wasn't wearing any, and that those garments were hers. Swearing violently and tugging the blanket up over her shoulders (that certainly jolted her awake), he turned from the kitchen and grinned at her. It had not been their first time. That had passed long ago, but they did it so rarely, she wasn't accustomed to waking up nude and him on the other side of the room or bed. The clock on the wall read 6:45. Aang and Toph were both late risers, and their earliest class was at 8:00.

“You said you'd wake me up to study!” She screeched. She grabbed at the clothing on the ground and, as best she could, grappled with and then put on her undergarments without leaving her spot beneath the blanket. She quickly ran to her room and put on some clothes. Throwing a sweater over her head, she stormed into the kitchen, with a face that looked like it was trying to be threatening, but also trying not to choke on laughter. “How _dare_ you leave me like that on the couch!” she yelled.

“Keep your voice down,” he shushed her with a smirk, finally finding somewhere to put the little container with concentrated coffee in it, and shutting the lid. A soft whirring sound filled the small room joining the two apartments. 

“You- me- couch!” She said, gesturing widely, incredulously.

“Yes…” he seemed horridly pleased with himself. “Anyway, I did promise I’d wake you up to study, and I meant to do that _after_ I made you coffee. We can’t have a homicide before seven fifteen, and since it’s very likely that I would be the target, my dream death is at midnight, so I refuse to be murdered by my coffee-less girlfriend at quarter-to-seven.” He had a scar, quite large one, that went from under his eyebrow to his eye, a burn scar. He’d never provided details, and she didn’t want to ask, but despite -or maybe because of- the scar, he was still beautiful.

She gnashed her teeth, but as memories from last night -more and more vivid with each second- rose up, her face was flushed a furious red and she was trying _very_ hard not to grin or scream or pass out from sheer embarrassment. She hadn’t embarrassed herself in front of anyone- just herself.

At last, the whirring stopped and he retrieved a mug from below the coffeemaker. He handed the mug to her, and gestured to a counter full of half-opened coffee bags, sugar packets and twelve different kinds of milk and creamer. She then proceeded to add a minuscule amount of milk to the mug and a pinch from a bowl of some sort of organic sugar she’d learned about in her Organics class. Everyone else who shared the kitchen said it tasted foul, so she had the entire bowl to herself.

Zuko was lounging on the couch when she turned, halfway onto his side, so she pushed the coffee table close and laid down beside him, almost cocooned by his body, and propped her neck on a stack of pillows. 

“Okay,” she said, sipping her coffee. “Quiz me.”

Zuko stared blankly at her. “Okay. Uh. What’s the biggest organ in your body?” 

Katara rolled her eyes. “Skin. Obviously. You clearly don’t know about this. My final is mostly going to be pictures of ‘ooey-gooey’ insides and asking me to label them. Take the book,” she sighed, and thrust the book at him. “There’s a page in the back with all the practice images without captions. The answers are on the next page. Point to one, I’ll tell you what it is.”

Zuko grimaced, leafing to the back of the book, which he put down on her stomach. He winced as he saw a picture of a disembodied eyeball on his way there, and turned a nice shade of green as he saw the page he was meant to look at. 

“Okay. What’s this gross thing?” He said, desperate for this session to end.

“That’s a phrenic nerve, Zuko,” she sighed. “And the one next to it is a Vagus nerve.” He nodded as she listed each one correctly. “The one after that… A thoracic artery?” He shook his head.

“ _This_ is why I need to study!” She said exasperated, taking a long chug of coffee.

“You’ll do fine, Katara, I know you will. Now get that murderous book away from me,” he shuddered, closing it and pushing it off her torso and landed on the ground. 

“Zuko!” she exclaimed. Placing her mug on the coffee table, she tried to be mad at him, but his grin was contagious. She found herself placing both hands on his cheeks and kissing him deeply.

“I hate you,” she mumbled into his lips, and he leaned back in to kiss her.

“Am I too distracting?” He smirked, his hand finding the crook of her neck.

“Very much,” She breathed, and kissed him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter left to post, woo. You're almost done reading this super terrible series of oneshots.
> 
> Andrea xx


	7. Candles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Words:** ~1400 (kinda long)  
>  **Prompt:** Candles  
>  This is pure and unadultered fluff. And though the prompt doesn't come into play until the last 400 words, I really like this.  
> Enjoy!

Zuko didn't know why he was standing outside her door at midnight. He did know, however, that she was wide awake and keen of his every move, so he had to make something of the visit, or risk seeming far creepier than he intended.

“Hey, Katara,” he whispered.

“Zuko?” She asked, her voice soft and tinged with false sleepiness. “What are you doing up? It's practically midnight.”

He'd asked himself the same question many times that night. 

“I couldn't sleep,” he said, resting his forehead on the doorframe. It was mostly true- he'd been having bad dreams and didn't _want_ to sleep for the most part. But he also wanted to be with her. “And I know you can't either,” he added. She shifted in the bed, and the moonlight illuminated planes of her pretty face. 

“Rise with the moon,” she said with a bleak smile. He chuckled softly.

“Come take a walk with me,” he said suddenly. “It'll be fun.”

She smiled and rose from the bed. He was surprised to see she was wearing her Fire Nation day clothes she'd been provided with upon arrival to the palace. “I was going to go anyway,” she said, indicating her clothing. “But walks are nicer with company.” She stood and strides over to him, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. They'd been together about a month, and were quite comfortable with one another, but not to the extent to sharing a bed, mutually.

Her hair tumbled in loose unruly locks down her shoulders, and she pulled back the top layer of her hair with a black clip, pushing the rest behind her ears. With a little smile, she took his hand, and he leaned down to kiss her lightly. She flushed immediately, and was looking quite flustered, to his smugness. 

“Where are we going?” She asked. 

“Somewhere special,” He said with a grin.

They left the palace building, hand-in-hand, making small conversation. But instead of exiting into the grand gardens through an equally grand archway, he took her aside, through a smaller ornate door, that led into a narrow path lined with hedges that towered over their heads.

“I've never been this way before,” she said, glancing at the last sliver of a crescent moon in the clear, starry sky. 

“It's a project Uncle started after the war ended. We wanted to keep it secret until it was done.” He replied evasively. 

“And what is this mystery project?” Katara asked, frowning. 

Almost as if on cue, Zuko led her around a corner in the path which revealed a lovely sunken garden. There was a fountain gurgling partially to the side, with a statue of a dragon, with its head tilted upward, water cascading down it's sinewy body from where it spewed out from the dragon's jaws. Algae was planted in the bottom of the fountain, along with other forms of coral and sea plants, where black, white and orange koi fish swam, lit up by glowfish that dwelled in the fountain, giving off a soft golden light from their puffy bodies. 

Above the garden was a trellis of what appeared to be grapevine, winding densely around a red wooden framework. Along the stone walls of the garden were candles propped up in sconces, but they were unlit, the only light filtering in from the vines overhead, which caused many corners to fall into shadow, and their contents were too dark to make out. There were benches around the walls, and large pots containing various exotic plants. Off to a corner under a gap in the vines was a small patch of dirt, with several small plants already growing in it, though it was difficult to tell if they were weeds. 

In the center was a sunken area, more so than the rest of the garden, the ground covered in pillows and a small wooden table in the center, with a kettle and teacups. Above the tea table, there was a gap in the vines and their frame. causing beams of cool moonlight to fall over the table in shafts. Surrounding the sunken benches was a row of jasmine flowers. Fireflies meandered through the space, casting soft light.

Katara gasped, her eyes widening as she descended the short flight of stairs. 

“Zuko, it's beautiful!” She exclaimed, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him into a close hug. She pulled away slightly, and he leaned forward and kissed her.

“It was all Iroh's design,” he said dismissively as she broke away from him and wandered through the garden, around columns, trailing her hand through plants. “I just provided him with the space.”

He stood by the entrance, watching her admire the space. She sat down on a plane of stone floor between the miniature tea table and the fountain. 

“Really, Zuko, this is beautiful.” Pointing at the corner where the patch of dirt was, she asked, “What's that over there?”

Zuko had to move next to her to see what she was pointing at. Sitting down beside her he said, “That's what Uncle Iroh calls his tea garden, though technically this entire space is a tea garden.” Zuko indicated the tea table- the reason for the name. “He wants to grow his own plants to make tea from, from that patch of land.” 

Katara nodded. “Did you have any input as to the design?”

“I suggested some kind of cover, so that it would remain concealed from the higher windows of the palace until it was finished. I suggested vines, and he liked the idea and decided to keep them.” Zuko glanced upward. “It's almost finished. I doubt he'll tell many people about it, or allow access very often.”

Katara only hummed in response, her chin propped on the heels of her palms, her eyes half closed in a drowsy state of awe. 

They fell into comfortable silence, the soft cooing of the birds in the vines and the sound of water in the fountain filling the gap soothingly.

“This place is so relaxing,” Katara murmured. “I can only imagine how much better it would be with a cup of tea and- oh! Maybe Iroh would consider adding a steam bath?” She seemed particularly pleased with herself, as she yawned softly.

“I'll tell him,” Zuko replied, unfolding his legs and leaning against the ledge of the fountain. Katara scooted backwards and rested her head on his chest, arm wrapped around his torso. 

“Hey, Zuko?” She whispered.

“Yeah?” He hummed, and would be falling asleep were it not for the ledge of stone digging into his back. 

“I really like you,” she said drowsily, with a childish grin.

“I really like you too,” was his response. He was in a state of tiredness that almost made him giddy. So the next thing he did, he did without thinking. 

The candles surrounding the space flared to life with a flick of his hand and an exhale, and she stared in wonderment as all the corners of the garden, previously hidden in shadow, sprang to view. There were cacti planted in small patches in a corner, still pools framed with tree roots, lily pads floating idly. One wall was completely covered by an entangling ivy with some indigo berries hanging off some branches. There was a little nook in one corner, framed by ivy, just big enough for someone to sit in comfortably.

Katara didn't speak. Her blue eyes were wide, rapt and trying to see as much of the sunken garden as she could. 

“Oh,” she breathed. She tilted her head up to look at the other end of the garden behind his shoulder. Unable to resist, he kissed her, and she placed a hand on his cheek, drawing herself up.

“You look beautiful,” he whispered, as awestruck with her as she was with the garden, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

She flushed visibly, and kissed him in thanks, before settling her head in the crook of his neck, her arm across his torso. Her eyes closed and her breath evened.

“Love you, Zuko,” she mumbled in her sleep. It was the first time the word love had been used in their relationship, and it thrilled him immensely to hear her say it, despite that -or maybe even more so because- she’d said it in her sleep. 

“I love you too,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head. She smiled in a way that suggested she was trying not to, and was feigning sleep. He rolled his eyes, but smiled to himself, until the candles he'd lit fuzzed in his vision and he closed his eyes. 

He found he wasn't scared of having nightmares anymore when he was by her side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The inspiration for the garden came from Butchart Gardens in Victoria BC, which I had the opportunity of visiting three years ago. Though this one wasn't modeled directly after their garden, alot of aspects were inspired by their sunken and japanese gardens.  
> I hope you liked it! This concludes my works for Zutara Week 2016, I hope you enjoyed it. If you liked this, please leave a comment/kudos and if not, feel free to tell me why so I can improve.  
> If you have any prompts or requests for a fic, feel free to leave it below.  
> Lots of love,  
> Andrea xx


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